01.1 Finding Creative Distance for Revisions

Amber Helt: Welcome to the Final Draft Podcast, where we talk about how writers revise, edit, and finish strong. We are your hosts, Carrie Turner and Amber Helt. Today we're talking about finding creative distance and getting into the mindset of revisions. I'm so excited that we get to be here today, Amber. Normally we are editing books or we're coaching other people, and today we get to take a little bit of time to hang out. And ⁓ talk about how to help other people revise their books. So how did you get into this whole crazy book world anyway? Tell us about you. Yeah, so I'm Amber Helt. Hi. I own Rooted in Writing. It is an editorial boutique where we work with traditional publishers and independent authors for all stages of the editing process from division developmental editing all the way down to proofreading and typesetting. So I got into this actually Right out of college. ⁓ I got my undergraduate in creative writing. I also got a degree in French language and linguistics because language is real fun and I like to joke that the only thing I got out of those other degrees is just no confidence in how to spell words in English is what ended up happening. But ⁓ I got into this ⁓ right after school. I started working for a big a big five publisher up in New York for a little bit, and I realized that Manhattan was not Great for me. I'm kind of a houseplant and there wasn't enough direct sunlight or horizon space for me. I really did think that growing up in LA I could handle New York and they are two very different cities. ⁓ so that's fine. But after that I moved down to Dallas, Texas, and I worked for a small publishing house there that ended up actually being a vanity press. Womp womp. And it was just so depressing. I remember ⁓ at some point I was in the lobby. And one of the authors came in and I had worked on her book and it was a memoir actually about nutrition. And she was so kind and I loved working on her I was her copy editor, I believe. ⁓ and she was just like distraught and I'm like, ⁓ my goodness, like what's going on? And she was like, I just did the math on my contract for this publisher and if I sell every single book in this print run, I will not have broken even for what they are charging for this book. And I at that point I'm like, I have to get out of here. I do not wanna contribute to this. So I fairly quickly after that left the publisher and started rooted in writing. So I have been a independent editor for the past gosh, eleven years now. and I work primarily with science fiction and fantasy, but we do a lot of military sci fi, which I understand is sci-fi, but it's its own flavor, trust me. ⁓ we do a lot of killer and mystery and Honestly, a lot of nonfiction as well. But I would say that like our bread and butter is speculative fiction. That is kind of the space where I spend a lot of time as a reader. It's where I spend a lot of time as an editor and as a writer. And so that's kind of been where I've been hanging out. And now since changing that rooted in writing from just me being a freelancer to more of an agency model, I've been so blessed in that I don't do as much grammar editing as I used to. Primarily my team handles that. So I get to really hang out in the space of developmental editing and story coaching. So my whole job at this point, what I've been doing primarily for the past five years, has been working with authors on figuring out structure and character psychology and looking at what the market is asking for and what our artist's vision is for a work and how do we reconcile the two so that we gain initial interest quickly but then sustain impression after they have finished the book with all the other noise going on. And that's kind Long-term viability. Long-term viability while still feeling like you're writing for your own story's vision and you can see yourself in it and not just of ⁓ I just pumped something else for the out for the algorithm, which is so soul crushing. ⁓ so yeah, most of my most of my career at this point has just been story structure and talking about the actual craft and bones. I teach line editing at the Editorial Francis Association. Out I do a lot on the writers conference circuit for teaching writers how to write well. ⁓ and write write with intention. And so all things reading and writing has been kind of just my entire professional space since college. I like to I'm so happy that in high school I worked in high school I worked at a flower shop, which was delightful. But since starting undergrad I have only ever really had a job in the publishing world. Carrie, what is your what's kind of your space and role and story with how you've gotten into this space? ⁓ gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Mine was was so different than yours. And I love yours. I feel like I feel like it's just the classic. I always knew it. This is what I was gonna do and I went to the big city and then I became a really cool independent thing. I love your story. I love it. ⁓ No, mine mine was different. I actually didn't major in English, even though I super wanted to, because I thought, you can't get a degree in English, you can't make money in this. So instead, while I majored in child and family development, I just took all of the unnecessary English classes that would be enough to be a major. But I just thought I can't make money in English, so I'll take Victorian poetry. I'll take film as literature. And I was just such a mess. Shout out to my early 20s. ⁓ I actually became a teacher for seven years. ⁓ although let's back it up. In college, to be fair, I did work for the college paper. I was a journalist for the pine log and I just loved it. So I I ⁓ I was a journalist and I took all the cool English classes that I thought would never make. ⁓ after college, I became a teacher for seven years. I wrote a parenting blog called Raising Up Mommy, and it was so cheesy, but just creatively so joyful. And I also ⁓ created, I wrote and created curricula for different schools that I worked at. Again, so doing a lot of writing, but thinking that'll never make money. ⁓ and then I actually went into marketing and ran a small marketing team. And as I did that, I was writing the parenting blog and another mom actually told me that she was a ghostwriter and I thought, ⁓ I could do that. I could do the thing that would never make money. And so I started ghostwriting and editing on the side while I was also working and marketing. And then one day a friend told me that they were ghostwriting. And I thought, wow, that would be really exciting. So when a fellow writer told me that they were ghostwriting part-time, I tried it out too, and I found that there were a lot of really lovely writers and authors who were looking for independent editors. And so as I shifted into that space, it happened in a much more organic way than I would have imagined. And now here we are nine years later, and I I just feel so grateful I get to do this full time. And I work In a variety of genres. I would say probably over half of what I do right now is memoir and creative nonfiction. I also work in a lot of women's fiction and ⁓ historical romance, modern romance, and children's books. So I love the idea that regardless of what genre you're in, what's true about the book that you're writing is that this is something you deeply, deeply love. And at some point we all pivot away from writing that beloved first draft into needing to revise it and to make it an even better version of itself. And that's what we get to talk about with you today. Let's get into it. What an appropriate opening episode for this podcast. Yeah. You know, as people who are editors but also authors, this is something we have to look at in our own lives, right? When we're off the proverbial clock, there is such a different feel from drafting that first draft of a book to revising it and looking at all the hard decisions that you're gonna have to make. Absolutely. And I think that it's one of those things where before I got into editing, when I was just writing for myself and going through undergrad with an English degree, I was focused so much on the craft and creation process that when it came to fixing what I had written to make it actually palatable for others to want to read as well. I was like, ⁓ no, I don't know how to do this. And it's and I kind of thought it was just like working on the draft itself. And really what ended up happening was I got into a vision revision vortex where I was just rewriting things over and over again. Because I didn't know how to edit. I only knew how to write. And so I thought that editing was writing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I remember when I was in college and I was taking Victorian poetry and I would read something by Christina Rossetti and I'd be like, this is perfection. If I could write something like this, everything would be grand. ⁓ but the truth was, like, that's nobody's first draft. Not even Christina Rossetti's, right? It's I I I liken it to like putting clay on a potter's wheel. Like at first you just have to put enough clay on the wheel so that you can spin it. ⁓ and that first draft looks sort of like a book, the way that ⁓ a lump of clay looks a lot like a vase, but it still needs to be spun. It still needs to be carved up, right? I like to say that the you know, this is kind of an a new take on an old saying that I've heard a hundred times, but the first draft is something that's written for the writer. And the second draft is written for the reader. Or really every draft after that's written for the reader. And so the question is, how do we take our story that we love? It's something we've given birth to pretty much, and how do we go become objective enough to turn that into something that other people are gonna enjoy? What does that look like? Sure. I mean, I think that's that discipline is not really talked about a whole lot in the writing space. It's an excellent thing that is discussed in critique groups. Which if you, dear listener, are not part of a critique group, it is the lifeblood of the creative life. It just it's so important. But there's so many resources out there for drafting and for co idea cr generation and for marketing something finished that when I was talking to Carrie, because we have been dear friends for a long time at this point, and we are both professional editors and writing coaches and we're just always bouncing ideas back and forth on how to handle different client. ⁓ manuscript puzzles that we weren't into or just like how life is going in general for us that we were like, you know what is not in the podcast space is revision discussions, at least not in the spaces where we occupy. And I thought this would be we just thought this would be a great project to work on together to kind of like bring all of these things that we are always talking about with each other and with our clients to a wider audience. Yeah. To make the revision space better. Because really revising is in itself its own discipline and its own craft. ⁓ is something where the biggest difference between a writer and an editor is objectivity. When we are so to kick off this podcast where we are talking about revising and we're gonna be talking about specific way things to look out for in your draft when you're revising and giving us tools to execute that. And sometimes these tools feel a little broad because I don't know what you're writing. I don't know if you're writing a mystery or a romance or a memoir or Something with an ensemble cast or a isolated POV or whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, the way that we look at a novel and the way that we go about shaping the craft of the novel so that it has higher impact, more intentionality, better focus is gonna be rather universal in how we use these tools. So even if not every episode is necessarily for you, there's always something for you in it. That I would recommend that you look for and always be asking yourself, how do I apply this to me? And so the very first thing that we need to talk about in all of this is getting into the revision mindset. It's not writing, it is something different. If and writer is defined by their ability to create something, an editor is defined by their ability to structure something. And so this is where we're gonna be transitioning into away from our writer selves. So we don't get into revision vortexes and back into our revising selves so that we can be very hyper-intentional of what we've already done the hard work on. Yeah. And you know, that's the thing that can be really hard. It's how do you take this thing that you've essentially given birth to, that you've poured your proverbial blood, sweat, and tears into? ⁓ hopefully not literally, but how do you take this thing that you've created that's given you joy and pain? ⁓ and hold such a piece of your own soul and then go, ⁓ let's rip it apart and make it better. Gosh, that's hard. So what do you so carry, you do a lot more coaching than I do at the moment. So typically what is like the first piece of advice that you would give a client when they are needing to transition from I wrote the end and now I need to revise. What do I do? Yeah. So I like to I feel like this is helpful for ⁓ coaching. It's also helpful for developmental editing. ⁓ which is when we're leading them into the revision mindset. ⁓ I like to tell clients that, you know, bringing your book to a revision coach or to a developmental editor is kind of akin to taking your child to the doctor, right? If my kid has a lump in their throat and they've got a fever and I've already tried to treat it at home and it's not working, I'm not gonna go to the pharmacy again. I'm gonna go to the doctor, right? ⁓ and so I like to tell clients, like you're this book's parent. This is your book baby. You've given birth to this thing that you deeply love, and now you wanna see it be the healthiest version of itself. And I'm kind of like a doctor. ⁓ wow, that sounds low key narcissistic. I didn't get my MD, but what I do have But in the metaphor of things, in the metaphor of life, what I do have that a doctor has, ⁓ not an MD, is hopefully objectivity, right? Because I didn't give birth to this child, I can look at it a lot more objectively. And ⁓ and so I like to tell clients, I know. The book world better, but you know your child better. So I'm gonna diagnose what's wrong with this book, right? And I'm gonna give you suggestions on how to make it a healthier version of itself. That might mean surgery, ⁓ it probably does. It might mean antibiotics. ⁓ and then you get to, as the parent, be like, okay, we're gonna do this, or I'm gonna go do herbal remedies, or I'm gonna go get a second opinion, right? but Moving into that revision mindset ⁓ is gonna force us to have that objectivity. Sometimes the best thing a writer can do to get objectivity from this child that they love so much is sending their book to a developmental editor, a doctor, so that they can take a break. And when you take a break from something, it gives you the emotional space to end up being more objective, right? So if you've written a draft and you've not gotten a developmental editor, here's my little soapbox moment for take it to the doctor. ⁓ they will be objective, but also it gives you space to take a break from it, to lean back for a second, to take a deep breath. And sometimes it really is that space that allows you to come back to it with greater objectivity. So that when you return to the pages that you haven't seen in a few weeks or a few months, you can kind of lean in and go, Okay, I already know I love this kid. I took a little break. Now what can I do to make it healthy? And so if you think of revisions in terms of health, right? then that's the point of all of it. If we're killing our darlings, ⁓ if we're taking out words that we love, if we remember the point of it, is we just want to make this thing healthy so it can go out into the world as the best version of itself, that can help as we shift into not do not what do I feel good about for this book, but what makes my book the healthiest version of itself. What do you think, Amber? I think it's interesting. I obviously as a developmental editor, I am pro give me your book so I can help it. ⁓ I tend to obviously rooted in writing is a very like growth and cultivate and gardening minded kind of space. But I actually don't want clients giving me their books after they finish writing it. I one hundred percent agree on giving space and having them take space before they get back into it. But I actually kinda want them to get back into themselves several times and workshop it with ⁓ a critique group and then come to me. ⁓ like I would say like in in your analogy of like the doctor space, it'd be like saying, all right, something there's a tickle in the throat. Which is to say, you finished it. How dare you say the end. That's officially that's officially a disease and now you're sick. ⁓ go to your medicine cabinet, which is what do you have what tools do you already have in your arsenal? You can go back through and work on this and then go to the pharmacy, go to your local critique group, go to other writers, get feedback from your local community, your offline space, see what you can get from it there, and then at that point, you go to the specialist for okay, I've picked everything I possibly can on my own, and now I need help with what is beyond that. But even throughout that whole space, I do think that I think th I do think that giving it space is the best first step. There's a lot of excitement when you finish, but you're like your creative juices are like buzzin'. You are ready to go. You are in draft mode still. Absolutely. And I think that's I think that's part of why it's so hard to revise as you write. Like there's this lie that I think we tell ourselves as writers sometimes that if I was just a better writer, I could cr create these excellent first drafts and then I won't need to revise. Like the goal isn't To become good at identifying critical literary analysis within our own works and creating this creative distance to be able to shift from subjectivity to objectivity within ourselves, but instead this idea that if I'm just a better genius of my art, then I don't need that. And I think that that struggle, that wrestling is like our biggest thing that holds us back from being good revisers. Because I want to empower a writer to be a good revisor. I want you to have full agency in what happens to your book and you're the parent, you're the creator of this thing. But I need you to take a freaking d development class. Like and I don't mean that in a I don't mean like a literal book development class. I just mean I need you to take some ownership and like invest in this piece. And so by giving yourself space, I think what's happening on a non ⁓ just like, ⁓ give me some time so you forget about some things. Is I here's a separate analogy. Again, but like I like to talk about it in the terms of computer RAM. So when you are writing, you have all of this extra information. Your emotions that fuel the mood and tone, your idea of pacing, of character arc, all of the subtle hints and things, like all of just like the essence of your story that you're holding, and you are just like very deliberately dripping in different proportions to mix these different colors and thickness and concoctions into your story. That's also up in your head. But So when you go back and immediately start revising, whether you are in the drafting revis revision vortex space or you just finished the end and now you're gonna go back and start revising, it's all still there. And you cannot objectively look at what you have on the page and what information the reader is getting because you have too much context that you are carrying. And the best way to put yourself in your reader's shoes is to remove that context so we can look at what are we actually giving. the reader. And so I don't think s giving it space in the sense of this arbitrary, ⁓ it needs to sit there for three months or two weeks or like it's not a prescription. It's the idea because you're all everyone's life is different levels of busy and distracting. Everyone's attention span is different levels of catch the water or watch it fall between your fingers. And I think that like you know your own mind best, but the idea is that you give yourself enough distance so that the context has faded and we can look at the words for what they are. Not for the representation of the triumph it was to write it. Not because that residual emotional swelling is still within you and you like when you read it, it immediately pul calls back into recall the emotions when you were sobbing at your keyboard writing that death scene or that makeup scene or whatever it was. It's gone. And we're looking at it objectively. Which isn't to say that you're like twiddling your thumbs in that time. You can start Start drafting a different project. Take a break and be a beta reader for someone else and fill your mind with other things. And then when you are d ready, you can come back to it. And that one then they'll be it's a nice little tray. They'll they'll beta read for you. And then I think also another thing that you can go ahead and like fill your mind creatively with in that space is comp titles. And the idea of like, I wrote this thing, my draft is done. I have this vision for how to be. I'm gonna go read some other books in my market that will inspire me for what a real good final draft looks like so that when I do go back to a revision space, I have an inspiration close to hand and it's not the inspiration, isn't my own feelings about this project. Yeah. I think reading other books in your genre is one of the best ways to get creative distance while still being in the book world, in that headspace, right? ⁓ Because what we're doing when we're reading is we're receiving words instead of creating words, right? So it made it might inspire us, but it's also gonna make us readers again. It's gonna make us receivers of the written word instead of creators of it. ⁓ which can help put us in our future readers' headspace as well. What are they gonna get out of this? and and that's one of my biggest pieces of advice when people are like How do I get creative distance? I'm like, go read something in your genre. Like just go read for a little while. Remind yourself that you're a reader so that you can empathize with your reader too. And it might be in the reading of someone else's book that you get insight of what yours really needs. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we were talking earlier before the episode about kind of ways to find creativity, ⁓ creative distance from our projects and just like ways to get it. To get ourselves into the right mindset for it, but you had some really good, like crunchy tactile tips on how to do this. ⁓ and you mentioned something called the medium shift theory. So talk to us about that, Carrie. Yeah, so when you shift the medium, you shift your mindset, really, you do. And so I have a really good friend who's an artist, and she was talking to me recently about how when she's moving from oils to acrylics to canvas to you know paper or something else. it it can put her in a different headspace and it got me thinking about books and how we do it really the same way. So if you need space from your book and not time space but emotional space. Those can be different things. ⁓ you want to change the way that you experience your book. You want to put yourself in the mindset of the reader. And there's a few ways we can do that. ⁓ one way is simply the place that we read our book. So when I'm recording my podcast or when I'm editing for clients, I'm right here in my office. But when I'm writing for me, I am sitting in my hammock with my laptop in my lap. Or I'm laying on my tummy and I'm having tummy time like a small child in a creative space, right? And when I am revising something that I create, I go somewhere entirely new. ⁓ I might sit at a coffee shop. I might go to someone else's house. I might go to a park. But I purposefully put myself in a new physical location because our brains are such natural pattern seekers, right? And so if I've written this book in my hammock and I sit down to read it and I tell myself, I'm gonna be objective today, there's no way I am. My brain is gonna pick up on where I'm sitting and how I'm feeling and it's gonna remember all the other times that I sat in that space and felt that way. And I'm gonna feel this creative ownership over my book. But if I go sit at a coffee shop or I go sit by the lake, my brain is gonna be grasping at straws for what pattern this is creative. And there is no pattern that it's creating, because it's something all new. And that's entirely the point. So that's one way you can do it. ⁓ and and if you go to that same spot, whether it's in your house or somewhere else, every time you revise, your brain is gonna pick up on that pattern. ⁓ we're at the coffee shop again. She wants to be objective, she wants to kill a darling, right? that's one way is you can change your physical location, your environment. But there's you can also find new ways to read your book. So you're not staring at the same computer screen. You might print it out. A lot of people find that having a physical copy of their book makes it feel physically different. another thing you can do is there's a lot of apps where you can have your book read to you. I think this is really lovely and it's one of those spaces where tech can really help us, right? I don't want you to ever let AI write a book for you. But dang if someone else's voice reading it to you doesn't put you in another headspace, because it really does. So try printing out your book. And physically holding it or listening to it. I know so many editors who when they do their cold read of a client's book the first time through, because they want to read the book the first time like a reader and not as an editor. They want to just get the information that a reader gets before they get to start like messing with it. They'll have Microsoft Word read the book to them. ⁓ which I can't get those voices to not greet at my soul. But I know a lot of people who it works so well for them to do that. and I actually have a client that ⁓ that is kind of doing what you're talking about, Carrie, where he reads books for fun on his phone, on h the Kindle app on his phone. And so whenever we do revisions and I send it back to him, he goes through all the revisions on his phone because he wants to be in a reader mindset for things instead of a writer's mindset. That's so cool. And I ⁓ I that's super I could not, but it's super impressive. And I think it's one of those things where it's like I don't even consciously think about the the medium shift for how I get into different spaces. But you're absolutely right. I write for fun on my phone. And that like my most of my novel's been written on my phone on the Scrivener app while at a playground while my kids play. But then I revise on my computer. I Because it doesn't feel like work. It feels like joyful creation. It's joyful creation. It's writing it long form on a notebook and then transcribing it later. but if I whenever I write on Scrivener on my computer, even though I'm writing so much faster, I am self-revising so much more because my laptop is my workspace. This is where I if I'm if my pinky is involved in the writing process, ⁓ I'm fixing a comma splice. I'm not creating a metaphor, my pinky's involved. But it's it's because you go into that structural headspace, which isn't wrong. You're an editor. And I love that you're just already having a medium shift organically without even knowing it. Like you know, your your heart and your brain know intrinsically I am writing creatively. I am editing and revising structurally. So this is something that you're aware of without even, you know, calling it that. ⁓ but it it it is how our brains work and ⁓ helping clients identify that I feel like can be just so deeply helpful. ⁓ absolutely. I think another thing that is helpful as well when we are getting into the revision process And just stay focused on revision as we're going through it. Because either you're entering into revision, I think, from one of two spaces as a writer. You're either doing a self revision pass where no one's telling you what to do. You just know it needs to be better and you're gonna sit down and work on it. Or you're doing a a ⁓ extremely motivated revision pass where either a critique partner or an editor has given you some feedback and now you have to do something with that feedback. And so When we're doing the latter, it's I think a lot easier to get into revision space because you have a checklist, you have a job to do. You have been told that your POV sucks and has no motive. All right, let's fix it. You've been told that your sentences are repetitive or whatever it may be, you've been given some very specific feedback and you can kinda go through and start making those decisions about what are you gonna keep, what are you gonna step, all of those things. But when you are self revising, which is so important to do And so isolating, which is why I feel like there shouldn't be too many passes of that is my hot take, I would say. Like I think that revising in community is helpful. ⁓ is so much healthier. If you are journaling, no one needs to see it. This can be purely an isolated art. But if you are writing with the intention of an audience connecting with it, you can't put hours and hours and weeks and years into something and then go over it and over it and over it and then expect immediate positive feedback from your audience and then you're so surprised when somebody didn't connect with it and you never even asked them in that process. Yeah. As if you're actually reaching the right audience member. I see this a lot with memoir. I work in a variety of different genres, but I would say probably over half of what I do is just memoir right now. And one thing I say is the difference between a journal, which is for your personal catharsis, and a memoir, which is for other people to read. The difference is in how you structure it. That's it. It's knowing what to tell where, what to leave out, where to add more. A lot of books are written in the rough draft phase as a free flow of ideas, right? And then in the revision process, you go back and you structure it. I will say, caveat, that as a book coach, sometimes I'm doing revision coaching and sometimes I'm coaching people through their rough draft. And so I try to offer them these little cheat codes if I'm coaching them through the rough draft where we are plotting it on the front end. We are looking at, hey, even though this is your life story, what's the main theme? What's our catalyst? What's our climax? How are we riding towards this? so this is my short but important soapbox for plotting. I do think plotting on the front end can be really helpful so that when you go into that creative space. you are still free flowing but you know the bounds of what you're flowing into regardless once you get into a revision space you have to be even more objective and whether you're writing a memoir or ⁓ you know high fantasy ⁓ that goal remains the same it's not just how do I feel about this but what is my reader going to glean from this how are they gonna feel about it And that's why creative distance is so deeply important. For sure. I always tell authors that I think that a plot and this is and this is coming from someone who I I personally am such a heavy plotter. ⁓ in my life and my writing. But I think that fancies I think the outlines are meant to be stepping stones and the way that you want to leap from stone to stone is that creative discovery process. But on the back end, when you are revising, that's when I want a spreadsheet. That's when I want it blueprints for an architectural plan. That's when I want us to get really detailed and intentional. Not that you have to do make a book map in order to do a revision, but if you pants your draft, just going back and making an outline, not of your idealized version, but the actual what do you have on the page is so helpful. Like I always I love listen, I love Save the Cat. It's so great. I often will run into an author who use Save the Cat to draft But they used it when all of their steps and so they didn't leap between these points and that creative discovery process never happened. And so all of those little filler things that make the book so lively are missing. And I'm like, I need you to go back and use when you every when you do your next draft, use a seven point plot structure, simplify it. And then when we're ready to revise, use save the cat. Save the cat is great on the back end. It is good for idea generation at the front end. But if that's like your hard hard structure, And that it can sometimes be a little bit stifling. That's not for every writer, that's just for some. I'm just saying if you as a listener are like, I've done the thing, that was hard, I don't know what happened, I think it's because you forgot to dance between the steps. And that's probably the tricky point there. ⁓ But when we are in our draft mode and doing all the things that Carrie said, I kind of like to have to encourage writers to look at your s each scene through three lenses. Cause at some point you're like, Alright, I've been revising And I just don't like I'm self revising, I'm getting lost. I d every time I sit down, it's like pulling teeth to try and figure out what my next task is. Where do I even start? Yeah. So if you're starting first with figuring out your outline, so you just have an idea a basic bird's eye view of the overall flow of everything. I would then have write down your little notebook three things. I want you to identify 'cause these are gonna be what I call your market pillars for market vitality. Or sorry. These are gonna be your These are gonna be your book pillars for market viability. So what it's gonna be is as we're going through and as you're working through your revisions, you're going to identify three things. First, it's the genre. Where in the store are do we find this? Where are we going to find this in the book? You can have lots of different genres and subgenres and you know blends and subversions, whatever. I don't care. You should have a lot of that stuff. What shelf is it going on in the bookstore? And I think a lot of writers don't know. And I think that's an important question to answer. Because it's going to inform the way that you shape and flow your revisions, what tone needs to be held, what how we need to like mix that primary versus the secondary versus the subverted. It's just an important thing to keep in mind of like it's going in this bookshelf. Will that make sense by the end? Or do I lose the market at some point? And it that's why it kind of falls off. The other thing Similarly, would be to identify your main theme or topic. It's it's what K Carrie or don't you always say it's keeping the main thing the main thing. Like it's it's figuring out what is We do say that a lot. You say it you say it, listen. You say it a lot. ⁓ but it's important and I think that like so that when you're trying to identify like what to trim, what needs more of, what is your main theme? If someone were to say what's your book about and you were to say the theme Is that true for your story or do you have to add a bunch of qualifiers? What is your main thing? And then the last thing being genre conventions. These are gonna be your buzzwords for marketing. So if your main theme or topic is your elevator quick, my story is about grief in a fantasy world. Done. Okay, that's your genre, that's your market. What are your genre conventions, the buzzwords? What's what's making this unique compared to others? There's so many books out there that explore grief. There's so many books out there. That are fantasy, what is a unique aspect of your book within those two spaces that you can then do it? And for the reason why we want to identify those is because those elements, your those unique set pieces, those unique conventions that you're using, that theme and your genre, those are the focal points to your revision strategy. Everything else you do is in support to the moments in your story where those elements shine brightest. So as you're going through every scene in your book. You can ask yourself, how am I supporting my genre, my theme or topic, my conventions, whether it's happening in this moment, this is a reaction to a past moment or it's a preparation for the future moment? How am I serving the main point of my book so that readers have an engaging, enthralling, immersive experience when they hold the book in their hands at the end? Yeah. Yeah. And I think for some people That starting with a seven act structure. For some people, it's using Save the Cat. For some people, it's going this is the theme. This is the main thing. And how you keep the main thing, the main thing can vary in terms of structure on the front end. But on the back end, when you're revising, that structure's gotta get so much thicker and so much clearer. Mm-hmm. Yeah, a lot of times I think I talk to authors early in their drafting phase and they don't really know. what the theme or main theme is. And here's the thing about theme with your book is that it's like you don't get to pick it. Your reader gets to pick it. Because your reader is going to insert so much of their own lived experience into the writing as they should, as is the intent of human storytelling, that they are gonna be to they get to decide what the walk away is. But what you're doing is you are giving them the through line to follow it. This is the highway that I built. There are many exits, but it runs north south. And that was the intended structure. It goes in this direction, exit where you may. And that's the vehicle of theme that you're gonna do. But what a lot of new writers I think have in their first draft is that they have not even really a good orientation of where their theme is going. And it's usually because their main character doesn't have a good orientation of what their composition and transformation is going to look like. So I think if you're listening to this and you're just like, I don't know how to pick that. Start with your Protagonist. Start there. There's probably a problem somewhere in that construction that's going to then as you figure that out, it'll answer the rest of the questions. Because it doesn't matter if we have great set pieces and it's a really buzzy genre and you've got like this really interesting topic. If the person who's telling the story or having us vicariously experience the story and then we get to be with them through that, if they're not doing it authentically, we don't care. Even the most distanced book. Like, think about Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones kind of treats their POVs like tissues. We use we abuse ⁓ we throw ⁓ away. Sometimes we light them on fire. Yeah. But they're engaging. The clearly the story is not about where any specific character ends up. It's about something bigger, but we are invested because we are invested in every character, whether they are good, bad, ugly, incessual or dead. They're just writing dragons. Yeah be all the things. Listen, we don't need to get graphic on this podcast. It's such a good series. But like we don't need to go there. The point of it is is that character and character connection is going to be the vehicle for the rest of your story. Even if you don't think that's what your story is is a character driven story. Yeah. It's a character driven story because it's a story written by humans for a human audience about human lived experiences. With only human context to feel that. Yes. And I will say one thing that Game of Thrones did really well is that they drum roll please kept the main thing the main thing, right? So we know that this feels very distance, very omniscient, very removed. We know that ⁓ anybody could die at any time. And that's consistent. We know that they're all hungry for power. We know that it's an ensemble cast where no one is deeply altruistic and no one is safe. But that's consistent. they did a really good job with their world building so that even when you're shocked, you're not that shocked. You're like, yeah, I knew that person probably had to die. Someone was gonna die this episode. Because they kept the main thing the main thing. And you can find that in your book too, with a little creative distance. So I think to wrap up this episode, let's talk about some ⁓ applications that we can give listeners for like, all right, so we're ready to get into a revision revision mindset. I'm here to make this next draft my final draft, whether it is your third or thirtieth run through this book. What are some five concrete actionable things that we could tell our listeners about finding creative distance? Yeah. So I think the first one is giving yourself a little bit of time to forget your feelings. Now, you're not gonna forget your feelings fully because ⁓ they're they still live there in your body and in your memory. But just like when you have a fight with someone or when you fall in love with someone and then you break up, time doesn't heal all wounds, but it does make the intensity of some of them go away. ⁓ so I would give yourself a little bit of time, whether it's a few days or a few weeks or a few months. ⁓ and then the next thing I would strongly recommend you to do is to change the medium through which you experience your story, whether that's printing it out, whether that's having a mechanical voice read it to you, or just going to a new location while you stare at the same computer. Looking at it or listening to it or holding it in a new way can make a really, really big difference. If you want to go extra hard mode and feel extra brave, have a critique partner read your book out loud to you. Where they read it and you just sit and cringe and make notes. And that's all you do. ⁓ my gosh. That's hard but good. That's hard. That's one reason critique groups are so lovely. If you live in the DFW area, I just cannot recommend the Dallas Fort Worth ⁓ writer's workshop enough. They were really helpful to me. when I was revising my children's book series. ⁓ so yeah, but if you live somewhere else, look up like literally Google writers groups in my area. There's gotta be someone nearby. And they are gonna wanna read your book 'cause you're gonna be willing to read theirs. It's true. It's true. All right. Next one I would say is ⁓ if your is here's my here's my piece of advice next. Is that your book is going from a passion project to a product for sale. If your intent is publishing, your intent is to create a product. So you need to identify your market pillars to center your revision strategy around this. It's not that we are erasing art. It is not that we are prioritizing capitalism over artistic expression. Do not hear any words that make you make a frowny face and throw your h headphones across the f the floor. Listen, I'm just being honest. If you want it to be a published book, you're wanting it in front of a market. Readers are customers, so make a plan about that. It's an art it's an artsy fartsy plan, but it is a plan to make to re to meet market expectations for what you're writing. And then another one I would recommend. Devastating if true. Devastating and true. Another piece of true. Another piece of advice I would give you is to make a revision plan for yourself that is outside of your own thoughts, like an editorial letter. Even if you have an editorial letter, the way that you're gonna go through and Execute these changes unless you have an awesome editor who gave you those steps, and those steps happen to align with the way your brain is wired perfectly, which is incredible. Never fire them. Always give them food, give them shelter, make them come back. But if unless you have that magical situation, write out a plan for yourself of how you're gonna do it. If you are self-revising, make a plan. I'm going to address character, I'm going to outline, I'm going to fix. my descriptions or whatever your plan is. I love having an external document to be my instructions when I get lost in my own self. When I don't know what to do next, I love blaming the boys in corporate. I love saying I would love to retweak this metaphor a million times what the boys in corporate say. Today I'm identifying pacing slowdowns or whatever it is. I have a plan and I'm following it and I don't get to argue with myself on what that gets happen next. I have Objectivity. And by having a revision plan and something like a checklist written out, you can have a progress bar that's showing you how how far you are, which gives you a little bit of hope. It helps you say, Hey, I can get back to creative the creative zone again in this after I finish these tasks. Maybe after you finish your revision plan, the last step is go back and rewrite whatever. Fantastic. But give yourself a plan so that way you have somewhere to go next. There's always the next branch to hold on to while you're swinging through this forest and you don't feel like you're just gonna fall back into your revision vortex and get stuck on the prologue for twenty more weeks. Mmm. Mmm. It's almost like you're keeping the main thing, the main thing. ⁓ gosh, the repetition. All right, Jennifer Coolidge. Yeah. I can't help it. I can't help it. It makes me want a main thing real bad. On that note, we've come full circle from friendship to objectivity and back to emotions and things that we love. Guys, thank you for joining us today. We've had a great time. We hope you've had a good time learning a little bit about ⁓ the devastating need to have objectivity in your book. But if you can gain that, it really will make all the difference. And hopefully Any final thoughts. This has been Our final thoughts. I would just say, hopefully this episode has been encouraging or inspired in some way. I hope you stick with us as we go through our next few episodes. This is a brand new podcast from two people who are barely tech literate. The fact that we translated ourselves from paper to the internet is insane. If you are willing to have a little bit of patience and grace as we figure out what the heck a podcast is and how are we gonna do this well, I think that our upcoming episodes are gonna be so good for you. We are gonna be talking about hooks and how to kill your darlings, identifying bloat, w having easy objectivity little craft lessons to practice the scales of revision in the grand ⁓ orchestra of writing. There's so much good things that are coming. Show don't tell. ⁓ I'm there's just a lot. And I'm so excited for all of us to go through this together. I'm excited for us to have these fun conversations and an excuse to hang out with each other every week. I'm excited for you, listener, to and experience the humanity of our failed and flawed communication process and for your books to hopefully just get so much better as you're given these helpful tools in revising your book. So thank you so much for joining us on our first episode. Yep. If you want to stay in the loop on upcoming episodes, and we hope you do, join our newsletter through our website or follow our socials at final draft podcast. And we'll catch you next time where we discuss, is my story hook working? Bye. Bye!